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What is the holiday season for if not to step back, reflect on the past year and reconnect with those you love. Since at this time of year calendars seem to magically swell with parties, dinners and casual get-togethers, make your gathering as fabulously effortless as possible with a meal that feeds a small group and a full house alike.

The trick to entertaining with style is to prepare a dish for your guests that is delicious, showstopping and requires as little cleanup as possible. This dish, my friends, is the total package. While it’s written for four, it can easily be cut in half for date night or tripled to serve a dinner party for 12. Season the chicken and queue it and the grapes up on a sheet pan so that it’s all ready to go into the oven later. Prepare the grits a short while ahead of time and keep them warm by transferring them to a heat-safe bowl, covering with plastic wrap or foil and setting the bowl over a pot of simmering water.

Was that the sound of you enjoying your own party? Or perhaps it was uproarious applause for a delicious meal that looks like it came off the pages of a magazine? Either way, cheers to the host!

Chicken Legs with Roasted Grapes and White Cheddar Grits

Total Time: 30 min
Prep: 5 min
Cook: 25 min

Yield: 4 servings
Level: Easy

Four 10- to 12-ounce chicken legs, trimmed of excess fat
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons ground paprika
Salt and ground black pepper
1 small bunch seedless red grapes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped or grated
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup quick-cooking grits
4 ounces sharp white cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Season the chicken legs with the spices and some salt and pepper. Arrange on a baking sheet along with the grapes. Drizzle the chicken and grapes with olive oil. Roast until the chicken is deep golden brown and cooked through, about 25 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, place a pot over medium heat with the butter. Add the shallot and garlic and cook until softened, 1 minute. Add the stock and milk to the pot and bring to a boil. Slowly add the grits while whisking. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the grits, stirring often, until they’ve softened and absorbed the liquid, 12 to 14 minutes. Stir in the cheese and season with salt and pepper. Reserve warm.

To serve, divide the grits among the serving plates and top each portion with a roasted chicken leg, bundle of roasted grapes and drizzle of the pan drippings from the chicken.

Patrick W. Decker’s life revolves around food. Always has, probably always will. As a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and past member of the culinary teams for Food Network stars Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, Marc Forgione and Bobby Deen, he’s now the Digital Content Manager for FoodNetwork.com, CookingChannelTV.com and Food.com in NYC by day and develops recipes at his home in New York’s Hudson Valley by night. You can see what he’s up to by following him on Instagramor visiting his website at patrickwdecker.com.

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Orange Beurre Blanc Sauce for Seafood Recipe

Yield: Makes about 1 cup.

Ingredients 2 oranges 1/2 cup white wine 2 teaspoons minced shallots 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter Salt and white pepper

Method

1 Zest half of one orange (about 2 teaspoons) and juice the two oranges (about 3/4 cup). Put the juice, zest, wine and shallots in a sauce pan on medium high heat. Cook until it is syrupy and almost gone.

2 On low heat, whisk in the butter continuously and vigorously, 1 tablespoon at a time. Butter is the only emulsifier for this sauce, and if you slowly add it, continuously stirring, the sauce will achieve a silky smooth texture. Do not let the sauce boil.

3 Add salt and pepper to taste.

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The technique inserts platinum atoms inside the polymer interchain of an organic semiconductor, with different spacings allowing it to produce different colors of light. Their hope is to create a polymer with various spacings of platinum atoms, allowing them together to create white light from a single material.

Z. Valy Vardeny, University of Utah physicist, uses a glove box to handle light-emitting polymers under cleanroom conditions.
SOURCE: University of Utah

“We put the platinum atoms inside a polymer interchain using a synthetic process,” said University of Utah Professor Z. Valy Vardeny in a telephone interview with EE Times. “And we change the spacing between the platinum atoms to tune the color emitted.”

In addition, the platinum-rich polymers not only fluoresce, like R-G-B LEDs, but also phosphoresce like phosphor-coated LEDs, potentially making them much more energy efficient than traditional OLEDs.

“OLEDs today fluoresce, converting only about 25 percent of their energy into light, but our platinum-rich polymer is phosphorescent too, allowing us to recover come of the remaining 75 percent of electrical energy,” said Vardeny.

The next step for the researchers is to experiment with different spacings between the platinum atoms in the polymer interchain, as well as to experiment with other heavy molecules besides platinum. To date, the researchers have produced two materials — one with a platinum atoms between every link in the interchain — resulting in violet and yellow light, the other inserted a platinum atom between every third link, resulting in blue and orange light. The hope is that a polymer with various spacings between platinum atoms can produce all the wavelengths in white light.

“The ultimate goal is to create white light. Unfortunately, white light is very not well defined, but essentially we want to emit all colors,” said Vardeny.

The platinum-rich polymer today must be stimulated by light to work, but once the formula for a white-light polymer is defined, the researchers will fashion an OLED material out of it that emits in response to electrical stimulation. The researchers estimate about a year will be needed to perfect the white-light emitting polymer and another two to convert it into an OLED.

The researchers also plan to apply the technique to creating a new type of solar cell. And because platinum-rich polymers allow information to be stored on the spin of electrons, the material has the potential to create a new type of memory chip.

Get all the details in the free downloadfrom Scientific Reports.

Funding was provided by the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and China’s Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. The research was conducted in cooperation with Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Sergei Tretiak, University of Utah postdoctoral researcher Chuanxiang Sheng (now at Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China), and with University of Utah doctoral candidates Sanjeev Singh, Alessio Gambetta, Tomer Drori, and Minghong Tong. Chemist Leonard Wojcik synthesized the platinum-rich polymers.

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